State of the Word Address (Recap)

WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg, has given the “State of the Word” address, which focused on the growth that the open source web software company saw in 2011.

WordPress now powers 14.7 percent of the top million websites in the world, up from last year’s 8.5 percent. Additional data shows that WordPress is powering 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the U.S.

Mullenweg also included information in his speech about a WordPress survey that was recently conducted.

More than 18,000 people from all over the world responded to the survey. Their responses showed that 6,800 of them were responsible for over 170,000 websites, and received a median hourly rate of $50— making the unstable economy easier to deal with for independent developers and site administrators.

Other topics touched on during the speech included information about the future of WordPress, such as capabilities for new browsers with HTML5 and CSS as well as a look at WordPress 3.3.